James Roy’s blog

More and more authors are sharing their thoughts, and talking about what they’re up to, on their blogs. Reading an author’s blog is a great way to ‘get to know’ the author through the personal style of writing in the blog. It’s good to know that famous writers are just people, and that they’re not always writing about serious stuff, and that they have a sense of humour.

One such author is James Roy, author of books such as Hunting Elephants, Town, and others which you can seehere. James’ blog is called head vs desk, and it’s a great read. James has recently posted about theSydney Writers’ Festival, but he has also given his two cents worth on the Matthew Johns furore.

What fun! Yesterday, five hundred kids high school kids (some of whom were either actually in primary school, or pupils from Our Lady of the Sacred Oomp-Loompa) streamed into the amazing Sydney Theatre to hear Randa Abdel-Fatah, Garth Nix, Mal Peet, Isobelle Carmody and me talk about our books.

And today, slightly fewer (but still several hundred) kids flocked to the gorgeous Riverside Theatre at Parramatta for the same program.

My talk was titled Of Truths, Towns and Elephants (or why I’d have made a crap engineer) and it seemed to go over OK. I even sold a few books afterward.

But I have to say, that Garth Nix is a bit of a rock star. Yesterday, Garth wasn’t even on stage yet, and the MC said, ‘Our next speaker is Garth Nix.” And the place went crazy. Seriously ‘Oh-my-God-I-think-I’m-going-to-faint-someone-fan-me-before-I-completely-pass-out-OH-MY-GOD-IT’S-GARTH-NIX!’ crazy. Unbelievable.

I got my own cheer, but it wasn’t pre-emptive like Garth’s – it was only by slagging off Twilight. A girl in the audience asked me what I thought of Twilight, and I said, ‘I think Stephenie Meyer has singlehandedly set the liberation of women back by forty years.’ The questioner asked me why, and I said, ‘Because she tells us that someone like Edward Cullen can be as much of a p* as he likes to a girl like Bella, and she should just take it simply because he’s all shiny.’

I was slightly surprised when the place went crazy with applause, and to be honest, I felt just a tiny bit of my faith in the discerning nature of teens beginning to return.

I don’t know about you, but I think that James might be a teeny bit jealous of Garth Nix.